TrekOhio

Squirrels and chipmunks both stockpile acorns, but it matters whether the acorns fell from a white oak or a red oak. The acorns dropped by white oaks sprout soon after landing on the ground, but the acorns of the red oak lie dormant all winter and sprout in the spring. Since the sprout consumes the energy that was stored in the acorn, rapid sprouting makes the acorns of the white oak a poor choice for stockpiling. So squirrels and chipmunks typically eat the acorns produced by white oak as soon as they fall, and they stockpile the acorns of the red oak since they’ll last till spring. However periodically white oaks have a mast year in which they produce an unusually large number of acorns. In mast years both squirrels and chipmunks would like to be able to set aside some of these extraordinarily abundant acorns. So they have a clever way of preserving them over the winter. They remove the portion of the acorn from which the sprout would emerge, or if it’s already present, they just remove the sprout. Once the sprout is gone, even white oak acorns can be stockpiled.

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